Multiple IndaPlants from IndaPlant Project: An Act of
Trans-Species Giving (2014). Dimensions variable. Image
courtesy of the artist.
find them living in broken glass jars (Figure 2,
crab in broken jar), plastic bottle tops and any
other form of refuge that they can get their
pincers on.
Based on what we know about the new needs
of these animals, The Hand Up Project is dedicated to producing alternative forms of housing specifically designed for use by land hermit
crabs. The project uses an adaptable AutoCAD
design and a stereo lithography process for
fabrication. The key to this new design is that
it minimizes the spiral in the middle of a traditional shell, reducing the overall weight of each
house and increasing its internal volume-toweight ratio, which is something that the animal likes.
In its beta version, The Hand Up Project was a
great success. Twenty-five percent of the initial
crab population chose to move into new, fabricated homes when presented with the structures for a period of two months.
SciArt in America February 2015
As might be expected, the project produced
what may be the most expensive hermit crab
houses ever created, and the funding needed to
manufacture and distribute them is significant.
Although this effort is a minor, genuine attempt
to give a struggling life form a hand up via design, the ‘art part’ of this endeavor centers on
the way we propose to pay for the new dwellings. The Hand Up Project is currently soliciting
corporate sponsorship to fund manufacturing
and distribution—by licensing the houses for
advertising. In exchange for financial support,
the project will print a corporate logo on each
alternative shelter before placing it in the wild.
DM: Do you have anything coming up for The
Hand Up Project?
ED: I’m very excited about advances in materials. In the 1990s, we had to utilize rapid
prototyping to fabricate the alternative designs,
but we are now researching ways to organically
produce our forms directly out of calcium carbonate.
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